knitting

I started this shawl a couple weeks ago. I was okay until I got to the second light blue part. It is 156 stitches, a 3 stitch repeat…. Which I evidently cannot get. Somehow I developed a hole that didn’t look right maybe it was a dropped stitch so I went back stitch by stitch for three rows and started over. Ugh. Then I simply cannot keep the stitches straight and I end up with 157. And then I have to go back and fix the stitches – even though I have been saying k2 together, yarn over, knit 1 over and over. It doesn’t seem to help. Maybe I should only knit this at night after the children have gone to bed. But then I’m tired and I’m not sure I have the power to do it. I really wonder what this will look like when it’s done. If it will look alright or just dumb because of all my mistakes that I couldn’t figure out. I thought this was going to be easy.

I finished this cowl today. I’m so excited to really finish something (for Christmas) way before I started knitting for Christmas last year.

I used two skeins, and thank God I had enough yarn to finish without running out. The tail above is all I had left. Nothing like cutting it close.

I really love how the stitch pattern looks. This is the pattern on Ravelry. This is my project page on Ravelry, showing the details.

You can wear it without wrapping it around your neck… and fit a kid in there. Or you can wrap it around your neck twice and be super warm. I think I might make myself one because you won’t have to worry about the scarf ends blowing off your shoulder.

I used a simple seamless dress pattern from Ravelry to start this. I made one of these dresses for my daughter when she was younger (smaller) and it got to the point where the dress went to her mid-thigh, which was a bit short for me. So I decided to make her another one, and hand the earlier one down to her sister. I cannot tell you how much they wear these dresses. I think they might possibly be their favorite piece of clothing. I used some fair isle peeries and stripes with variegated yarn. It was too hard to use the variegated yarn with the solid yarn for fair isle patterns because I couldn’t see the pattern when the two yarns were the same color.

I was going to watch the season finale of Once Upon A Time last night, but when it started I realized that I had missed something. Two episodes, in fact, so I went to Hulu and finished watching those. Then I watched the finale. I went to bed after 11 last night. I am shocked, happy for Regina, and excited for the new characters coming to the show. After all Merlin has got to be awesome and I can’t wait for their stories concerning King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. After all, you can’t have Merlin without Arthur.

I’m knitting this dress for my eldest daughter. The one I had knit before was coming to her mid – thigh, which is just too short. So it became a hand me down. This dress is improvised with a basic pattern and I’m inserting rows of fair isle with rows of variegated yarn. I tried to use fair isle on all the rows, but it is really difficult to keep track of where you’re at when the contrast yarn is the same color at some points as the background color, so I just scrapped the fair isle with the variegated yarn.

I’m working on these Monster Pants for a handsome little man in Colorado. I think it will fit him for a while.

I need to finish the second leg, graft the crotch together, and sew in the eyes and teeth into the tush area. I started out with a small circular needle, then I switched to double pointed needles when I started the leg. I’m using a silver grey, neon green and navy.

I’m using this pattern on ravelry. Here’s the link to my project on ravelry.

My cousin has decided to become a foster mother. She’s approved for infants to 2 year olds… which means she’s not going to get a lot of sleep. But I thought I’d give her some of my hand knits. I’m using two strands of baby yarn together and a 10 1/2 circular needle. I think this is going to be awesome. After I’m done blocking it, I’m going to put a piece of fabric on the back so you can’t pull the fair isle floats. I’m using a cross stitch pattern as my fair isle pattern. I bought it on Etsy. I’m planning on doing most of them blue, and one of them bright neon yellow. I hope it turns out well.